quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Ugh. Songmaster. Horrible what happened to that poor character. If I was a gay male character in an OSC book, I'd jump out of the book and run and fight all efforts to be shoved back into the book.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/LJMarinelli This guy was with NOM and now he agrees with gay marriage. It's not as if churches have to be forced to marry gays, you know. Go him!
The gay character in Homecoming had it pretty rough, too. At best he was an object lesson.
What do you mean, "rough?" IIRC, the people that would have hurt Zdorab are the characters portrayed least sympathetically. IIRC, Zdorab manages to have children, but remains homosexual. IIRC, he also becomes a part of Nafai's community.
It has been a long time but from what I recall. the price of children and being part of the community being a "partnership" devoid of sexual attraction, joyless, uncomfortable coupling, and denial of a true romantic relationship. I mostly recall feeling profoundly sorry for him.
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Yeah, it was basically a case of 'coulda been (a lot) worse' for Zdorab if I remember things accurately. Not exactly a rousing endorsement, but rather a portrayal of a system in which some people are going to have fundamental aspects of their personalities rejected for their entire lifetimes. It's going to be a source of lifelong distress for them, and they're just going to have to live with it-because it could be worse.
Now, if you'd disputed the 'object lesson' portion of boots's post, I might have agreed with you. I don't remember reading that story and thinking he served as an object lesson-he felt very human to me. But it's difficult for me to put my head in a place where his life wasn't rough.
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For me, the lesson seemed to be "See, you can just suck it up, stifle your nature and have sex with women for the sake of children and 'the greater good' and you should. Here is an example of a homosexual who 'does the right thing'."
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Your interpretation is significantly different from mine; I don't think I took a "lesson" from it. I'll have to read it again.
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I'm not going to get into the homosexual debate here, since I've done it far too often on this forum for my own sanity.
I will offer my "coping mechanism" though. I deal with Card's stances on homosexuality the same way I deal with my grandfathers inherent racism - I express my disapproval if the views are expressed in a forum where I cannot ignore them, and I otherwise basically forget about them. I accept them as a product of the social constructs they were raised with, and realize that nothing I do will change them, thus while the idea may be flat wrong, it doesn't necessarily imply a moral deficiency in the person. Thus, instead of letting the issue eat me alive, I just take it as a sign that he is human.
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quote:I accept them as a product of the social constructs they were raised with, and realize that nothing I do will change them, thus while the idea may be flat wrong, it doesn't necessarily imply a moral deficiency in the person.
okay, to help me understand the idea. If it's a product of the social constructs they were raised with, there's a way in which the expression of that thing they were raised with isn't moral deficiency? Did this work for, say, slavers?
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While your grandfather and Mr. Card are, in all likelihood, not evil men, some of their individual beliefs probably are.
While recognizing that humans are flawed, condemning the beliefs which are "morally deficient" is not the same as condemning the human who holds them.
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quote:I accept them as a product of the social constructs they were raised with, and realize that nothing I do will change them, thus while the idea may be flat wrong, it doesn't necessarily imply a moral deficiency in the person.
okay, to help me understand the idea. If it's a product of the social constructs they were raised with, there's a way in which the expression of that thing they were raised with isn't moral deficiency? Did this work for, say, slavers?
In fact, it did. There were a lot of good, kind, moral people who owned slaves. Now we know better.
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quote:For me, the lesson seemed to be "See, you can just suck it up, stifle your nature and have sex with women for the sake of children and 'the greater good' and you should. Here is an example of a homosexual who 'does the right thing'."
I believe OSC has written at some length of his dislike for fiction that is so...pointed. That is, that is so deliberately preachy. As in intended to teach a lesson to individuals or groups of people. I didn't read the same intent into it that you did.
In fact, in those stories as well as in Songmaster the interpretation I had was, "This is the way it is. Not necessarily the way it has to be, because of God or the way the Universe is structured, but because of society as a whole, and it's terribly tragic-as exemplified by how some people live in this world."
I felt that way because Card's portrayal of Zdorab and of the homosexual in Songmaster - and the man who maimed him out of jealous rage - was, to me, deeply human and not ham-handedly 'God says so'. It felt like he was saying, "People are doing this." (By that I mean causing homosexuals to suffer these repressions and limitations) But...I'm not sure if his opinions have changed, but I really don't feel like he feels that way anymore about homosexuality. Or at least that's not the impression I get anymore from his political writing, or even his fiction anymore-I remember reading some of his work in the Ender's Shadow series for example that seemed to strike a substantially different tone while examining a similar concept.
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Uh.... Does he notice that he does that? Get really preachy? Especially in EiE. If the have babies and be heterosexual lectures were removed that book would have been a pamphlet.
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It's interesting that people notice this trend in his later books, but not in his earlier books. I'm not sure it has to do with a change in the author as much as it has to do with OSC's opinions being out of synch with some members of his audience.
Check out the Worthing Saga, sometime. It's one of his earliest work, and it's very "preachy." (It's also excellent writing.)
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He did that in some of the earlier Ender books. I was rather annoyed by a particular passage in one.
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I don't think so. OSC pretty clearly violated even his own rules in his later works in ways that I don't believe he does in his earlier ones. For example, a good example of this is making Anton gay so he can be OSC's mouth piece on what gay people should do.
I think it's a common pattern with many authors who get much worse as they get older that their earlier work contains "preachiness" that serves the story or characters or at least doesn't overwhelm them but, with their later works, they warp the story and characters to fit their message.
Heinlein and M. Knight Shyamalan come to mind.
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I notice what you're talking about, Scott-but I do believe something changed in his writing, not so much in my own opinions, because those haven't changed very much. I think one thing that has changed, though, is how much personality and presence a character has in a given story before he'll start lecturing protagonists about how important it is that they start cranking out babies, for example.
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I've always seen a bit of a separation from his beliefs and his writing, as his beliefs do not have to fit into the reality of this world (not a slam, he can believe what should be) where as for his writing to have any impact, it has to be a bit more grounded, even if it is speculative.
And while I admit I am a bit behind in my reading, I don't find his work to be overly preachy.
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To look at some less controversial works, in the women of Genesis series, compare Sarah to the last one (Rachel and Leah). The first told an interesting story about an interesting woman. The last book read like a Sunday School lesson. There were hints of more, but overall, it was too much lesson, too little character.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: To look at some less controversial works, in the women of Genesis series, compare Sarah to the last one (Rachel and Leah). The first told an interesting story about an interesting woman. The last book read like a Sunday School lesson. There were hints of more, but overall, it was too much lesson, too little character.
I didn't see this at all. OSC's characterization of the two women, and Bilhah, was fairly evocative, IMO. I didn't feel sermonized at all, and I thought the different ways that Leah, Rachel and Bilhah approached faith was well-portrayed.
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i say "who cares" about his religious or political motivations and just read his books because you enjoy them. There really is no sense in developing or creating a politically motivated thread unless you are just searching for a venue to promote your beliefs in the hopes to change others or create a debate.. gladly it has not been an argument.
just read his books for what they are, science fiction, and not some subterfuged based means of trying to implore OSC's readers into an autonomic belief system where the GLBT community needs to be ostracized or eradicated.
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quote:There really is no sense in developing or creating a politically motivated thread unless you are just searching for a venue to promote your beliefs in the hopes to change others or create a debate.
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i find value in discussion, just not when it bears no significance to how OSC writes his books. why do you all even give a sh*t about his personal views? I dont, I just wait in anticipation for his next book.
i get it.. you all want to feel like you are heard in regards to your politically motivated dribble.. but you know.. take it to a political/religious blog.. this forum is to discuss his books, not his personal/religious/political beliefs.
dont contaminate this forum with that rhetoric where it will easily cause alienation.
alas, this is my last post on this topic because this "discussion" will not change anything except for ego's.
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Thanks for the lecture on "how this board works" Mr. 3 posts.
You are so wrong in so many ways.
ETA: The biggest one being that this is not the place to discuss OSC's published beliefs and only his novels. This is exactly the place for this discussion. Which I welcome you to join, or not, but please do not judge people who put a lot of thought and passion into discussing ideas which are important to them.
quote:Originally posted by Rigg is my hero: i get it.. you all want to feel like you are heard in regards to your politically motivated dribble.. but you know.. take it to a political/religious blog.. this forum is to discuss his books, not his personal/religious/political beliefs.
Four posts and you're already a moderator?
Perhaps you should note that the title of this forum is "Discussions about OSC" not "Discussions about OSC's books".
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: In fact, it did. There were a lot of good, kind, moral people who owned slaves. Now we know better.
Slavers. In my example I'm using slavers, not slave-owners. The people who outright went out there and nabbed and traded people into slavery.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: In fact, it did. There were a lot of good, kind, moral people who owned slaves. Now we know better.
Slavers. In my example I'm using slavers, not slave-owners. The people who outright went out there and nabbed and traded people into slavery.
I think that there were many of even them who thought it was just a business, who worked for other people and didn't have a whole lot of choice so didn't think about it, for whom it was just part of everyday life. Take, for example, the guy who wrote "Amazing Grace". He didn't suddenly become good; he suddenly came to a realization that he had not had before.
Why would they be any more culpable than the people who paid them, anyway?
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Any more culpable? The slavers invaded peaceful foreign countries and beat, killed and captured fellow human beings, rounded them up like cattle, chained them around the neck and packed them aboard a ship where they were likely to die of malnutrition and disease, and if they made it across the ocean they were sold into slavery as farm equipment.
Maybe the slave owners were raised to believe that the slaves were subhuman property, but by the time they are in the mix, the enslaved people are already set into their horrible conditions...by the slavers, who took them from their homes.
So I say slavers are worse then slave owners, hands down.
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quote:The slavers invaded peaceful foreign countries and beat, killed and captured fellow human beings, rounded them up like cattle, chained them around the neck and packed them aboard a ship where they were likely to die of malnutrition and disease, and if they made it across the ocean they were sold into slavery as farm equipment.
I'm not sure that this is true. My understanding is that at least some of the slave trade thrived on inter-tribal warfare-- one tribe beating another tribe and selling the losers to the white men at the ports.
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quote:My understanding is that at least some of the slave trade thrived on inter-tribal warfare-- one tribe beating another tribe and selling the losers to the white men at the ports.
This doesn't actually make a moral difference -- financing a tribe to wage war and enslave another tribe is almost identical in its results, and thus its morality, to waging war and enslaving a tribe yourself.
quote:So I say slavers are worse then slave owners, hands down.
The thing I said above is the same reason your sentence here doesn't make sense. The slave owner finances and motivates the slaver, same way that the slaver finances and motivates the slave-capturer.
The slave-capturer only captures slaves, because he expects to sell them to the slaver, and the slaver only transports slaves because he expects to sell them to a slave-owner.
They're all equally culpable. If anything the blacks engaging in the slave-trade were living in fear that if they didn't capture an enemy tribe, they'd get captured themselves. So in a sense they're more justified, because of fear, than the white man who had no such worries of personal slavery.
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Sometime - often - good people do bad things. Through fear or ignorance or apathy we do things that rightly horrify people who know better or who live in better circumstances. And, often, good people fail to do good things.
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quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: I accept them [Card's stances on homosexuality] as a product of the social constructs they were raised with, and realize that nothing I do will change them, thus while the idea may be flat wrong, it doesn't necessarily imply a moral deficiency in the person.
Applause.
Were there an agreed-upon category of partnering called "marriage.civil.gov" or "civil.union" that provided the same 'legal' benefits as 'marriage' does, Mr. Card might not have written that particular article. Or, he might have written about something else that both his religion and his upbringing and continual thought coerce (enable?) him to say.
Since throughout history -- at least the history for which we have these kinds of records -- the approximate percentage of the population that can most likely be classified as "homosexual" has been, to my knowledge, between 3 and 8 percent of the general population ... and if Mr. Card is correct in that true homosexuality is not conducive to keeping the population going from an evolutionary standpoint ... there must be a very common "trigger" for the physical changes that enable this to occur. Or there may be a hidden advantage to some people we're not seeing. I haven't looked at this enough in depth. I'd enjoy seeing his comments about this, as he alluded to in the article.
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Bruce, basic genetics. Look up sickle cell and apply the same principles to homosexuality. Also, studies do show that sisters of gay men have increased fecundity. However, having read OSC books, I would expect a higher level of understanding of genetics from anyone who has recently passed bio 101.
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You don't get a pass from moral criticism for believing in and practicing something just because your parents taught you it was right. At some point, it's not clear where, it's a subjective issue obviously, you have to start bearing the moral weight for better or worse for it.
You already believe this yourself, DDD-because I very much doubt you would say that someone who practices good things, but was raised that way, cannot be said to be morally virtuous.
One's background is surely only a mitigating factor, and where we disagree is how much of a factor not whether it is or not. If it wasn't, human beliefs would be static-we'd believe what our parents believe, down through the ages. But the fact is, people's beliefs and practices change.
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Mitigation is not absolution. I believe that good people still bear the moral weight for bad actions while still being capable of being good people. Some people are "ahead of the curve" on some things but can be jerks about others. I would not have wanted to be married to Gandhi, for example.
Being a theist who believes in an afterlife where things are made plain, I believe that we all will face that moral weight for many things that we expect and some that we don't.
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I'm not entirely sure there is such a thing as a "good person" or a "bad person".
I think people do good and bad things, and many who often do bad things, will still do good things, and people who often do good things will still do bad.
Morality is very relative to the surrounding circumstance and not set in stone.
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You know, this reminds me of something Mark Twain once said in an essay of his. Every human being is a machine, built to perform a certain task, though they can do multiple tasks if they so choose. He said that each machine (or person) has impurities (such as racism, sexism, etc), which cannot be let go of very easily or by just that one person. He explained, in theory, that a human being who is raised a racist will always be a racist and that he cannot change this himself, however he may change if the outside world sees fit to change him (refining out his impurities), through various mediums like education and rehabilitation. Still, he says, a person may not do this completely on their own, because that person will never see anything wrong with what they are doing unless ultimately told they are wrong by someone else. And even then, it is still unlikely that they will change. In short, people are machines.
It's an interesting essay, and you can find it online, but it is rather lengthy.
Personally, I think there's some truth in that. OSC is a great man/machine who has found his purpose, which is to write, and he does it admirably and I consider him one of my personal literary heroes. However, he is still human, and thus is prone to impurities, just like anyone else. If you really search yourselves, you'll find you're the same way, whether you want to admit it or not. It's just the way humans are (thank you, evolution), and while we may change overtime, those impurities will always be there in some form or another.
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quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: I accept them [Card's stances on homosexuality] as a product of the social constructs they were raised with, and realize that nothing I do will change them, thus while the idea may be flat wrong, it doesn't necessarily imply a moral deficiency in the person.
Applause.
Were there an agreed-upon category of partnering called "marriage.civil.gov" or "civil.union" that provided the same 'legal' benefits as 'marriage' does, Mr. Card might not have written that particular article. Or, he might have written about something else that both his religion and his upbringing and continual thought coerce (enable?) him to say.
Since throughout history -- at least the history for which we have these kinds of records -- the approximate percentage of the population that can most likely be classified as "homosexual" has been, to my knowledge, between 3 and 8 percent of the general population ... and if Mr. Card is correct in that true homosexuality is not conducive to keeping the population going from an evolutionary standpoint ... there must be a very common "trigger" for the physical changes that enable this to occur. Or there may be a hidden advantage to some people we're not seeing. I haven't looked at this enough in depth. I'd enjoy seeing his comments about this, as he alluded to in the article.
This is an interesting point, one I've given some thought. Naturally, homosexuals are disadvantaged in their ability to pass on their genes, and so their siblings most likely have some advantage.
Anecdote begin (this is not scientific data): I come from a family which has produced several homosexual males and several "sociopaths". Whatever stigma is attached to sociopathy, the fact is sociopaths are intelligent, charismatic, and predisposed to promiscuity: in other words, they have a distinct advantage in passing along their genes.
Based on my own experiences, my hypothesis is thus: whatever genes contribute to homosexuality also contribute to sociopathy, either via different genotypes or some environmental factor which differentiates the two. The reproductive advantages of sociopathy is offset by an increased likelyhood of their children being born homosexual, while the disadvantage of homosexuals is offset by their siblings' advantage. In this way, it's similar to Sickle Cell Anemia: it's a genetic disadvantage which survives because a different expression of the same genes provides an advantage.
Quick note: I don't use the word "sociopath" in a negative way, though the word is inherently negative (as it implies a pathology). Some of our greatest leaders have fit the "symptoms" of a sociopath: I believe they play an important role in our species' survival.
This is not strongly related to the topic of legalization of gay marriage, so forgive my minor derailment: it's a topic that interests me.
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You would also have to tie it to a distinctly demonstratable reproductive advantage for sociopaths (this hasn't been shown), and overturn understandings of sociopathy by demonstrating conclusively that sociopathy is primarily a genetic trait rather than the result of early developmental environments (this contradicts everything we know about sociopathy).
In addition, it is a myth that sociopaths are highly intelligent. They are statistically no more intelligent than the average person. They also have problems with focus and concentration, and this is very bad for socioeconomic stature and productivity (i.e., holding a job.)
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There has been shown a higher fecundity in the sisters of homosexuals so the idea that the genes are passed on like sickle cell (kinda) is supported. However, I have seen no connection to sociopaths in the research. Furthermore, being exclusively homosexual has not been an option for much of history. There was huge pressure to reproduce. For God and country, close your eyes and think of England, that kinda thing. A lot of homosexuals have managed to breed.
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In my experience, many homosexual women seem to have had children (the "normal" way of sex with men, not just artificial insemination). Many say that it was before they knew/accepted that they were gay. However, I feel like there are often many differences between gay men and gay women (for one thing, I think more women than men "come to" homosexuality after some type of sexual trauma / abuse / rape).
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It's been my impression that current thinking on the subject seems to be that male sexual orientation is more innate and thus less of a choice, female sexual orientation is more flexible and thus more of a choice.
However I wonder if a equivalent restatement of the above might just be "there exist many more bisexual women than there exist bisexual men" -- so that this isn't about the sexual flexibility of properly straight or gay people, but just about different numbers of bisexual people choosing to identify as straight or gay.
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The arousal of a woman is not essential for procreation as it is for a man and for a too large part of history (including now) some segments of the population have not expected women to enjoy sex anyway so her sexual orientation was not even recognized as an issue.
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I tend to agree with AK, that is, that women seem more able to adapt to enjoying the same gender then men...or however that works out. I know many women who made out their female friends when drunk or "tried it" once etc, but (and here is where I have no idea if it is true or not, as it seems likely that men wouldn't talk about it if they had) do not know any men like that. With men, from my admittedly limited knowledge, it seems you either are gay, or not and do not "test the waters".
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quote:I tend to agree with AK, that is, that women seem more able to adapt to enjoying the same gender then men...or however that works out. I know many women who made out their female friends when drunk or "tried it" once etc, but (and here is where I have no idea if it is true or not, as it seems likely that men wouldn't talk about it if they had) do not know any men like that. With men, from my admittedly limited knowledge, it seems you either are gay, or not and do not "test the waters".
I suspect it may be impossible, right now, to determine whether women are as a gender actually more able to adapt to enjoying the same gender as men, rather than our society affords approximately one half of its members less harsh punishments than it does the other.
Put another way, I think the stigma to being a homosexual male is greater throughout most of American society than it is towards being a homosexual female. Until the playing field, so to speak, is more level, I don't see how we can say with any kind of assurance what one gender or another really prefers more or less.
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